Post navigation

How Big Data is Affecting HR Recruitment

So you’re fresh out of university, degree in hand, top grades in all of your classes, and you’re confident that you are going to land a job at that huge, successful organization that you have admired since you figured out what you want to do. You go to the interview, you answer all of the questions perfectly, and you have a great connection with the interviewer. You aced it! Then you wait for that phone call telling you that you got the job. And then the phone rings and the hiring manager tells you that they filled the position with someone else. But how can this be? Well it is probably because that organization has followed Google’s example and is using big data in their hiring process.

For decades and decades the process of reviewing resumes and conducting personal interviews were the standard process in hiring and recruitment. But a candidate who is more personable than the next can hide their faults in an interview setting and end up getting the job, but not perform well. But Big Data is changing that. A few years ago, Google did a study to determine if there was anyone within the organization that was particularly good at hiring.

The result: there is no correlation between what the candidate scored and how they performed in their job. Hubert Guillaud points out “When you ask somebody to speak to their own experience you get two types of information. You get to see how they actually interacted in a real-world situation and a sense of what they consider to be difficult.”

Meghan Biro, who writes for Forbes online recommends that anyone looking for a job can use big data to their advantage. She notes that “the greater your online presence, the more organizations will become aware of you and your accomplishments.” So for any of you recent university grads who are looking to land that dream job fresh out of school, start building your online persona. It will be an invaluable tool for you to break into the industry and getting the experience you need.